compelled me to make a speech by your unwillingness to answer me. 159. _Cal._ But should you not be able to speak unless some one answered you? _Socr._ It seems as if I could: for now I have carried my discourse to a great length, seeing that you will not answer me. But my good friend, tell me, by Jupiter, the guardian of friendship, does it not appear to you unreasonable, that a man who says he has made another person good, should blame that person, because having been made good through his means, and being so, he has afterwards become bad? _Cal._ To me it appears so. _Socr._ Do you not, then, hear those speak in this manner who profess to instruct men in virtue? _Cal._ I do. But what can you say of men of no worth? _Socr._ What then can you say of those, who, while they profess to preside over the city, and to take care that it shall be as good as possible, then accuse it, when it so happens, as being very bad? Do you think that these differ at all from the former? My good man, a sophist and an orator are the same thing, or nearly so, and very like, as I said to Polus[81]. But you, through ignorance, think that rhetoric is something exceedingly beautiful, and despise the other. But, in truth, the sophist’s art is as much more beautiful than rhetoric, as the legislative is than the judicial, and the gymnastic art than medicine. 160. But I for my part think that public speakers and sophists alone ought not to complain of the very thing that they teach, as being mischievous to themselves, or that in the very same charge they should at the same time accuse themselves for not having at all benefited those whom they profess to have benefited. Is it not so? ----- Footnote 81: See § 46. ----- _Cal._ Certainly. _Socr._ And surely to impart a benefit without a stipulated reward, as is probable, is proper for these men only, if they assert what is true. For one who has received any other kind of benefit, as, for instance, who has acquired swiftness of foot through the instructions of a teacher of gymnastics, perhaps might deprive him of his gratuity, if the teacher of gymnastics had left it to him, without having made an agreement for a fixed price, that he should be paid the money as nearly as possible at the same time that he imparted his skill to him. For men, I think, do not act unjustly through slowness, but through injustice. Do they not? _Cal._ Yes. _Socr._ If, therefore, any one should take away this, I mean injustice, there would be no danger of his ever being treated unjustly, but he alone might safely impart this benefit, if in truth he is able to make men good. Is it not so? _Cal._ I admit it. 161. _Socr._ For this reason then, as it appears, it is not at all disgraceful to take money for giving advice about other things, as, for instance, about architecture, or other arts. _Cal._ So it appears.